UN says protecting children online an 'urgent priority'

GENEVA

Making the digital world safe for children is an urgent priority, the United Nations said on May 29, adding that those responsible for online harm must be held to account.
U.N. rights chief Volker Türk said states had to force tech giants to embed child safety and said child harm was the direct result of business practices and design choices.
“The digital world that connects children to learning, community, and creativity also exposes them to real risks to their safety, privacy, and wellbeing,” Türk said in a statement.
“Online harms to kids’ safety, privacy and wellbeing are not innate or inevitable; they result from design choices and business practices that undermine safety, including addictive design features, such as infinite scroll, autoplay, and persistent notifications from apps,” he added.
“Enhancing protection of children online is an urgent priority that we need to make sure not only gets done, but that it gets done right.”
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights called for tougher measures by countries and tech firms to make online platforms safe places for children, through better regulation, oversight and accountability.
“Blanket social media bans are not a one-off panacea,” Türk added.
“Simply limiting access to platforms that remain unsafe cannot stand as the endpoint in effectively protecting children.”
He called for platforms to be made safer by design and ensure that data is protected, while “those responsible for harm can held to account.”
Türk said simply focusing on age restrictions would leave unaltered the designs and algorithms that made the platforms unsafe in the first place.
Tech giants must embed safety “by design, instead of shifting the burden to parents and children,” he said.